Editing Narration (section)

=== Second-person ===
{{Category see also|Second-person narrative fiction}}
The second-person point of view is a point of view similar to first-person in its possibilities of unreliability. The narrator recounts their own experience but adds distance (often ironic) through the use of the second-person pronoun ''you''. This is not a direct address to any given reader even if it purports to be, such as in the metafictional ''[[If on a winter's night a traveler]]'' by [[Italo Calvino]]. Other notable examples of second-person include the novel ''[[Bright Lights, Big City (novel)|Bright Lights, Big City]]'' by [[Jay McInerney]], the short fiction of [[Lorrie Moore]] and [[Junot Díaz]], the short story ''[[The Egg (2009 short story)|The Egg]]'' by [[Andy Weir]] and [[Second Thoughts (Butor novel)|''Second Thoughts'']] by [[Michel Butor]]. Sections of [[N. K. Jemisin]]'s ''[[The Fifth Season (novel)|The Fifth Season]]'' and its sequels are also narrated in the second person.
{{quote|You are not the kind of guy who would be at a place like this at this time of the morning. But here you are, and you cannot say that the terrain is entirely unfamiliar, although the details are fuzzy.|Opening lines of [[Jay McInerney]]'s ''[[Bright Lights, Big City (novel)|Bright Lights, Big City]]'' (1984)}}

[[Mohsin Hamid]]'s ''[[The Reluctant Fundamentalist (novel)|The Reluctant Fundamentalist]]'' and [[Gamebook]]s, including the American ''[[Choose Your Own Adventure]]'' and British ''[[Fighting Fantasy]]'' series (the two largest examples of the genre), are not true second-person narratives, because there is an implicit narrator (in the case of the novel) or writer (in the case of the series) addressing an audience. This device of the addressed reader is a near-ubiquitous feature of the game-related medium, regardless of the wide differences in target reading ages and [[role-playing game]] system complexity. Similarly, text-based [[interactive fiction]], such as ''[[Colossal Cave Adventure]]'' and ''[[Zork]]'', conventionally has descriptions that address the user, telling the character what they are seeing and doing. This practice is also encountered occasionally in text-based segments of graphical games, such as those from [[Spiderweb Software]], which make ample use of pop-up text boxes with character and location descriptions. Most of [[Charles Stross]]'s novel ''[[Halting State]]'' is written in second person as an allusion to this style.<ref>{{cite news|url=http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-441-01498-9|title=Halting State, Review|work=Publishers Weekly|date=1 October 2007}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2012/05/and-another-thing.html|title=And another thing|author=Charles Stross}}</ref>